The author was born in Scotland, lives in Canada and has seemingly used all his experience as a tabloid journalist to write a punchy, American-based crime story.
Its hero is Sam White, an ordinary guy drifting into middle age clinging to dreams of making it as an actor, who comes home from his nightwatchman’s shift to find that his home – with his wife and daughter – has been obliterated in a gas explosion.
Grotesque Twist
He then gets a phone call that gives this nightmare a grotesque twist. The caller claims Sam's loved ones were not in the building, that he has abducted them and wants Sam to commit various crimes if he wants them returned.
The first task for Sam is to rob a liquor store but thereafter the demands on him become more repugnant, such as shooting the man he has teamed up with. Zack Parker and Sam have worked out that they are both prey to the same maniac and are in a frantic race to find out who he is. Will Sam shoot Zack? Will he see his family again? If they are released will he go to jail for the crimes he has been forced to commit?
Hostages of a Psychopath
McKenzie juggles this churning mosaic of storylines with considerable craft. The reader moves from Sam to the police to the hostages to the psychopath in staccato chapters that fly by. This is an average-length novel but it’s split into 120-odd chapters, some shorter than a page. The impression created when reading it mirrors the characters’ frenetic quest.
The premise is similar to that of this year’s movie 12 Rounds, in which John Cena’s girlfriend is kidnapped and he has to complete 12 challenges for her release. The difference in Switch is that Sam relies on his anger and acting know-how to outwit his tormentor rather than his police powers.
Shanghai Tunnels
Switch’s tagline is, ‘Would you commit murder to save the ones you love?’ McKenzie toys with this dilemma, dragging his heroes to the brink of turning them into murderers and makes his audience ask themselves that same question.
He makes good use of an unusual setting too. Portland, Oregon, is home to the Shanghai Tunnels, an underground labyrinth reputedly used in the 19th century to ‘shanghai’ men into forced labour on ships bound for the Orient. Whether such skulduggery is true or the tunnels were just used for taking goods from the Williamette River to the town’s hotels and bars, they are still there and make a creepy maze for the novel’s showdown.
Revenge-Lust
Like many plot-rich thrillers, however, this one stretches plausibility to breaking point on occasion (could someone have consensual sex with their prom-night date and never learn she had been a rape victim that night, not be questioned by police and not know a fellow student had gone to prison for it?).
In addition, the blistering tempo has time to show little of the characters beyond their desperation and revenge-lust, while the dialogue is pithy without having much of a distinctive contemporary American tang.
Pulsating Debut
Still, the author has said in interviews that he writes about what terrifies him – and certainly having loved ones kidnapped in this way will make his readers shudder, What if?
Without doubt, a pulsating debut that will grab many thriller-lovers by the lapels and refuse to let them go.
- Switch by Grant McKenzie. Published by Bantam (UK): 2 July 2009 ISBN-13: 978-0553819915
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